Welcome, New Advisers!

We are so excited you are here! Plus, we have great news — first-time adviser memberships are free to KSPA. We have provided some information below about a few of the resources and organizations available to help you and your students continue to work toward excellence in journalism.

KSPA Mentoring Program

Being a beginning teacher or being assigned to a new teaching field, always brings new goals and new anxieties. However, being a new journalism teacher or adviser brings some special challenges. You are working toward a deadline, supervising the creation of a product, developing people skills among staff, promoting the use of legal and ethical journalism, and often doing all of these as a department of one.

The KSPA Mentor program pairs first and second year advisers with experienced, retired advisers who are there to support, cheer, instruct, suggest in any way that the new adviser needs. It is a win-win opportunity. The new adviser gets all the support he or she needs through visits, materials, on-line chats, phone calls; and the retired adviser gets to stay active in an area she loves. In addition to free KSPA membership, the mentee receives two years of free Journalism Education Association membership. Included with JEA membership is JEA Today magazine and a huge online curriculum. National convention registration is also discounted.

KSPA is proud to be a part of the JEA Mentoring Program. Mentors provide support to new teachers for two years, offering ideas, resources, coaching and other assistance as needed. The goal is to help new journalism advisers to establish quality programs, improve their own skills and continue on as advisers. There is no cost to the school.

The mentor is simply there to help and support in whatever area the mentee needs. This past year mentors have helped teachers with organizational issues, staff time management, taught some topics within classes, helped work out technology problems, been a sympathetic ear,  advised on legal issues, pointed out some available curriculum materials, and shared lots of cookies with advisers and their staffs.

Working with new advisers, sharing in their successes, helping them with concerns is a joy. If you are a new adviser and want to be a mentee or if you know someone, please recommend candidates to KSPA. We are always looking to help new teachers. Remember this is a FREE program!

State and area scholastic journalism workshops:

  • Jayhawk Media Workshop: KU will host its 54rd annual high school journalism workshops from June 10-14, 2018 on the KU campus in Lawrence. The workshop offers the chance to learn from expert advisers, a variety of courses, social activities, awards and more. Courses include Writing with Depth, Beginning and Advanced Photojournalism with Impact, Staff Leadership, Online Jumpstart, Moving Forward Online, The Best in Yearbook Design, Conceptualizing your Yearbook, Publication Design with Punch, Rethinking your News Publication and The Latest in Video Storytelling.
  • Flint Hills Publications Workshop: The Flint Hills Publication Workshop takes place June 15-17, 2018 at Kansas State University in Manhattan. The workshop includes team building activities, keynote speakers, project work and breakout sessions. Courses include Visual Communications, Storytelling, Leadership and Media Management, Photojournalism and Sports Writing.
  • Media Now High School Journalism Camp: Media Now offers a day camp, June 25-27, 2018, in St. Louis, Missouri and an evening camp, July 8-11, 2018, in Des Moines, Iowa. Both camps provide a variety of critique sessions, leadership trainings and best practices for storytelling to round out your three-day experience. Workshop sessions span in topics from design, writing, photography and video to web design, social media and iPhone storytelling. You’ll have an opportunity to deep dive into illustrations, infographics, video stand ups, interviewing techniques, photo essays and mobile video editing. Special tracks and hands-on workshops will also be available.
  • JEA Adviser’s Workshop: JEA’s Advisers Institute brings journalism teachers from across the country together for a week of adviser-specific training and networking. The 2018 JEA Advisers Institute runs Monday, July 9 – Thursday, July 12 at the LINQ Hotel in Las Vegas. Regardless of your experience level or the type of publications you advise, this institute has programming specifically for you through instruction strategies, technology in the classroom, subject-specific professional learning community participation, curriculum alignment to state and national standards, essential learner outcomes in a 21st-century classroom, media literacy, ethical journalism, best practices in creating formative and summative assessment tools and preparation and testing for Certified Journalism Educator and Master Journalism Educator status.
  • Other Summer Journalism Workshops: Learn about a wider variety of summer journalism workshops across the country. Locations include Alabama, California, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, New York, Oregon and online.

Other press associations to know about:

  • Columbia Scholastic Press Association: The Columbia Scholastic Press Association serves student journalists to make clear expression the standard for success, maintain the student media for students, to conduct contests and offer awards to make student media better, and recognize that journalism can be a means towards broader understanding of society and people. The association unites student editors and faculty advisers working with them who produce student newspapers, magazines, yearbooks and online media.
  • Journalism Education Association: The Journalism Education Association supports free and responsible scholastic journalism by providing resources and educational opportunities, by promoting professionalism, by encouraging and rewarding student excellence and teacher achievement, and by fostering an atmosphere which encompasses diversity yet builds unity. The association is an adviser-focused organization serving a diverse media community. To develop and support effective media advisers, JEA must protect scholastic press and speech freedoms of advisers and their students; provide an environment that attracts, develops and retains the best educators in the profession; build diversity at the scholastic and professional levels; promote and demonstrate educational use of the latest technologies, and provide innovative, consistent and quality services.
  • National Scholastic Press Association: The National Scholastic Press Association provides journalism education services to students, teachers, media advisers and others throughout the United States and in other countries. NSPA has middle school, junior high and high school divisions as well as memberships for college, university and professional and technical school student media. Each division of NSPA provides journalism education training programs, publishes journalism education materials, provides media critique and recognition programs for members, provides information on developments in journalism and student media and provides a forum for members to communicate with others and share their work. Through these activities, NSPA and its divisions promote the standards and ethics of good journalism as accepted and practiced by print, broadcast and electronic media in the United States.
  • JEMKC: Journalism Educators of Metropolitan Kansas City (JEMKC) is an organization whose purpose is to provide opportunities for collaboration, enrichment and development of high school journalism educators in the Kansas City metro area. JEMKC members have access to social events, professional learning community opportunities and contests for their students’ work.